Hanukkah starts tonight at sun down and this year instead of doing a craft we decided to get cooking and make some latkes. Food is a great way to teach your children about traditions whether they are ones you have been celebrating your whole life or if you are exploring them for the first time. Learning about holidays that we don’t celebrate is important to me, it teaches my son about diversity, respect and gives him a richer worldview.

We used a packaged latke mix, this made it simple for my son to make it with little aid from me. At 4 doing things independently is more important than doing things from scratch, and it was on sale at the market .

I handled the frying. While we cooked we chatted, which for me is my favorite part of our time cooking together.

Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat: A Chanukah Story by Naomi Howland is a Hanukkah story about kindness repaid and how things can go awry. Sadie is a kind young woman and after she offers her fire wood to an older woman who is cold the older woman repays her with a magic frying pan. This pan magically makes latkes , as many as you want if you say the magic words . Her hungry brothers are overjoyed, their bellies are full but as often happens, they get greedy. See the frying pan will keep cooking and cooking unless you know the magic words to make it stop, and her brothers didn’t hear those words. Mayhem ensues but the family and village find a way to make the mountains of latkes into a celebration. Beware you will be craving latkes after reading this.